Gobble, Gobble

Thanksgiving was a blast - all PCVs came into the capital for an AMAZING dinner prepared by PCVs for about 175 people. It far exceeded my expectations. We played football and held a talent show before and after dinner. Thanks to all who did the cooking and hope everyone back in the States had half as tasty a meal as I did.

Also, special thanks to Mark and Chrissy who recently finished their service and are right about now eating Chinese food in America. They treated Krista and I to an awesome meal in Chisinua. This picture is us being cold after the meal on the walk home to the hotel.

Random Pics from Copceac

This is how mud roads are transformed into paved ones.



Here's the high school that was started under the Soviet Union and abandoned when it collapsed.

A Good Day for a Dog

The last couple days I've been doing a lot of walking around town to explore. On my way to see the hospital/clinic - which I was surprised to see was pretty good - and introduce myself to the head doctor, I came across a puppy in distress.

He had managed to get his head stuck in an olive can and couldn't get out. Sadly, he was on the other side of a fence, so I couldn't reach him and he couldn't see me to move closer to the fence. As you can tell by the pictures, eventually I did manage to reach him through the fence and grab hold of the can long enough for him to pull himself out.




Peace Corps: making a difference one person... or dog at a time.

My Site

I decided not to go into work on Friday and instead upack and get settled in. I rearranged some furniture and with MacGuyver-like prowess repaired an essentially useless plastic covering over my very drafty window. [Duct tape: Never leave home without it]

This village does not have running water. Back in the days of the Soviet Union it did, but that infrastructure has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Nowadays, everyone gets their water from wells located throughout the village. They’re all about 75 feet deep and have a bucket attached to a chain with a handcrank. Everyday this is how I get my water.

I knew coming here the village was without running water, but for some reason it didn’t register with me that that also meant a low probability of finding working drains. In other words, anything you might pour down the drain – when you brush your teeth, wash dishes, do laundry, etc. – needs to be collected in a bucket of some kind and tossed outside. That made my first bucket/bowl shower a unique experience, standing in another large bowl to collect the water I poured over myself.

While were on the subject of water, take a look at the photo of the inside of my distiller after one use. There’s a lot of something in there – I think it’s lime. I showed it to my host mother and she said, “That’s why I only drink tea and not water.” Right.

I’ve started to make some friends – a few guys around my own age who were friends with Valentina’s sons, one of whom is a dentist in Moscow and the other is married with one daughter in a neighboring village.

As far as work goes, I still haven’t figured out exactly what I’ll do with my two years here. I’ve got to spend a few months just getting to know everyone and learning to speak the language better. I’ve wandered around town, poked my head into shops here and there to introduce myself, and usually greet kids on the street – and then laugh when they stare at me like I’m crazy. I don’t think people typically greet children they don’t already know, but I’m laying the groundwork for when they do know me. The other day I played the guitar at an office party, singing the one Russian song I know and a Beatles tune that I thought would at least be recognizable. Music is a great ice-breaker. For now, I’m content to finally have some time to myself – which was a rare commodity during training – and being the American celebrity in town.

Getting There

The swear-in ceremony and the preceding evening’s big group dinner were good, as expected. Highlights for me included performing a Russian song called “Poost” with my host-mother at the ceremony and then watching another group of volunteers bring the house down with a Moldovan dance performance complete with traditional dress. They were really great!

After the ceremony it was time to pick up all my things – one overnight bag at the hotel, 120 pounds worth of free weights that I bought from a departing PCV at the PC office, and then everything else at my host family’s house. [Incidentally, the driver sent by my new town’s mayor didn’t know how to get to the hotel where all PCVs had stayed the night before. Nonetheless, he kept saying he knew the way even when I knew he was on the wrong side of town. Eventually he asked some pedestrian (who also didn’t know the way) how to get there. Fortunately I knew. There’s something common among many 3rd world countries: no one ever wants to admit that they don’t know the way to somewhere. It’s as if it would be considered ruder to say “I don’t know the way” than to waste your time by driving aimlessly in the hope of finding the destination.]

The mayor’s office where I’ll be working sent a car, driver, and vice-mayor to pick me up, which was one more person than was really needed and took up vital space in the vehicle. On top of that, before we collected the bulk of my things from my house, we stopped off at one of the bazaars in the capital city so my two new co-workers could do some grocery shopping – not that I blame them for taking advantage of the opportunity. I’m just trying to convey my mounting sense of doubt about being able to fit everything I owned into a car that now had one extra person and enough food to feed… well, a lot of people.

So we get to my host family’s house and eventually manage to fit everything in the car and I have just enough room to sit completely still and every now and then breathe in the back seat. I said a tearful “dosvidanya” to my host family and set out on a bumpy three-hour ride.

When I arrived, I quickly moved everything into my new room; had a delicious dinner of potatoes, chicken, and a “salad” with my new host-mother, Valentina; and crawled into a very saggy bed and fell asleep.

New Contact Information

I have added my new contact information on the right. You can also send messages to my cell phone by clicking on the link. I will update more about my site in Copceac closer to Thanksgiving.

Swear-In, Part II

I've moved out of my training host-family's and will stay the night with all the other members of my group in the capital tonight. We'll be dining at a fine restaurant for our last civilized meal and then tomorrow afternoon we officially swear-in. I'll be playing a song on the guitar and singing in Russian with my host-mother. It's called "Poost," which is sort of translated loosely as "Ahhh, fuggetaboutit."

Then I leave immediately after swear-in for my new site. I'll probably be beyond the reach of the Internet superhighway over the next week while I figure out where everything is and whether I should visit the communal bit first thing in the morning or last thing at night...

But, I'll be back in the capital for a few days for a conference and a joint Thanksgiving dinner and talent show with all the PCVs. Will check email and make another post then. Ciao.

Wine Tour

We were fortunate enough to go on a winery tour of the State Enterprise Quality Wines Industrial Complex "Milestii Mici"(or for short and in English, Milesti Meech). It claims to be, and after being there I believe it, the largest wine cellar in the world. The catacombs were formerly tunnels for a lime mine, but for the last 40 years they’ve been reclaimed to serve as the maturing place for millions of liters of wine.

The tunnels have the ideal conditions for maturing wines. Located 40-85 meters (130-280 feet) below ground, they’re (obviously) dark and maintain a year-round temperature of 12-14 degrees Centigrade (in the mid-50s) and a humidity of 85-95% (we also use percentages in America, so I’m not going to bother converting this figure). There are 50km (31 miles) of tunnels passable by car and I saw several trucks down there being operated by some of the 350 workers who work underground every day.

Interestingly, this winery doesn’t have it’s own wine. It has no vineyards that produce grapes – it old acts as a holding place for others’ wines to mature, though apparently there are plans to purchase land and being producing their own grapes soon.

Oh, a word about the pictures… In most of the tunnels I saw there are these huge barrels along the walls, most 6 feet or more in diameter. The wine is pumped into the barrels, which never move, where it ages for a certain period of time, absorbing the flavor of the wood. Then it is bottled where it continues to age. All the specifics are way beyond me, but I admit I was impressed by the operation.

BDO

I must admit that my 2nd time through training is starting to wear on me. I’m ready to have a schedule of my own design, to start my real work, and to not have to sit through sessions that I already sat through back in Uzbekistan.

In part due to this desire for independence, 5 of us trainees opted out of a PC-organized day trip to southern Moldova (where I’ll be living for 2 years anyway). Instead, we decided to have a relaxing BDO (Boyz Day Out) in the capital. After meeting at noon, we wandered about town and chose a cheap kebab stand for lunch, sat in a park, drank real coffee in a café, hit another kebab stand for dinner, and capped off the evening with a screening of “Crash” at a small English movie theater. All in all, not a bad way to spend a day…

Pictured are the boyz in the movie theater, which is approximately the size of my living room and seats about 25 people in very comfortable slightly reclining seats, complete with a small table between every two seats for whatever drink you purchased at the downstairs bar and wish to enjoy during the film.